The "old Troy of the D. M. P." mentioned at the beginning of
Cyclops was a real person, Denis Troy, who worked for
most of his adult life as a constable for the Dublin
Metropolitan Police. Since he was born on 10 August 1853, he
would have been 50 years old in June 1904. It is not
altogether clear, then, why Joe Hynes should ask, "Who's the
old ballocks you were talking to?," or why the chapter's
narrator should reply that it was "Old Troy" who "was in the
force."
In Real People Vivien Igoe reports that Denis was
born to John Troy and his wife Mary, née Hennessy, "in the Slieve Bloom Mountains between
Roscrea and Kinnity in Co. Offaly." She may be mistaken about
the location, since on the 1901 and 1911 census forms Denis
Troy listed his birthplace as Co. Tipperary. The village of
Kinnitty is in County Offaly, on the western slopes of the
Slieve Bloom, but the market town of Roscrea lies just over
the border in County Tipperary, southwest of Kinnitty in a
valley farther away from the mountains.
In 1884, now working in Dublin, Denis married Bridget Murphy,
who was born in County Westmeath. According to Igoe he "was
living at 42 Newmarket (off the
Coombe) and Bridget was living at 48 Bellview near
Ushers Quay. They moved to Arbour
Hill after their marriage. Here they raised their family
of five children. In 1904 they lived at 14 Arbour Hill and by
1917 had moved to 8 Arbour Hill." Ambiguity attends these
addresses as well, because at some point in time all the
houses on Arbour Hill were renumbered. The digitized records
of the 1901 census at census.nationalarchives.ie show the
Troys living at number 14, but those of the 1911 census show
them living at number 7 rather than number 8. It seems that
the house still had the lower number in 1911, but by 1917, the
date cited by Igoe, it had been raised by one.
Troy had joined the DMP at age 27 in December 1880 and "was
stationed," Igoe notes, "at Manor
Street, which extends from Stoneybatter to Prussia
Street." This accounts for the couple's decision to move to
Arbour Hill and puts him in the right place, whether in uniform or not, to run into
the chapter's narrator on the corner of Stoneybatter and
Arbour Hill. The narrator's statement that Troy "was in the
force" is strange, though, because his DMP employment
continued until his 67th birthday on 10 August 1920, when he
was pensioned. Would he have been moved from street patrols to
a desk job (or promoted to Inspector) by age 50, prompting the
narrator to surmise that he was no longer a policeman? Or did
Joyce make him "old Troy" on the basis of bad
information, attributing to the 1904 policeman an age more
appropriate to the writing of Cyclops in 1919?
Or––still another possibility––is the novel characterizing
this narrator as a man who likes to think of middle-aged
people as old? He refers to Michael Geraghty, who was only 40
years old in 1904, as "An old plumber."
In a personal communication, Troy's great-grandson Mike
O'Connor reports that the five children of Denis and Bridget
were those who remained from ten live births. He has tracked
down records of four of the other five: Daniel (born 1892)
died at the age of 1½, Patrick (born 1896) lived for only two
months, Thomas (born 1899) died at 2½ , and Celia (born 1901)
died after one month. Family and census records identify the
children who beat these appalling odds—which, incidentally,
are the same odds encountered by Leopold and Molly Bloom in
their less ambitious production of offspring—as John (born ca.
1888), Francis (born ca. 1890), Gabriel (born ca. 1895),
Michael or Augustine (born ca. 1898, with different names
listed on the 1901 and the 1911 census), and Mary Kathleen
(born 1903). The 1911 census also shows three adult boarders
named Teresa, Joseph, and Margret Finnegan living in the
Arbour Hill house. On these census reports Denis Troy
identifies his family as Roman Catholic.
Mary Kathleen married Bernard ("Ben") O'Connor in 1932 and
had four children: Dermot (born 1933), Mike's father Brendan
(born 1935), Fergus (born 1941), and Vincent (born 1946, died
1950). Dermot O'Connor appears here in a photograph with his
grandfather Denis, now well and truly "old" at an age
somewhere beyond 85. The photograph was taken at the back of
the house at 8 Arbour Hill, probably on the day of Dermot's
first communion. Denis died not very long after, in 1943, and
was buried in the Mount Jerome cemetery.
Mike O'Connor has generously shared the three family photos
displayed on this page.
